[R] naive question

[Peter Dalgaard]

<rivin at euclid.math.temple.edu> writes:

> I did not use R ten years ago, but "reasonable" RAM amounts have
> multiplied by roughly a factor of 10 (from 128Mb to 1Gb), CPU speeds have
> gone up by a factor of 30 (from 90Mhz to 3Ghz), and disk space availabilty
> has gone up probably by a factor of 10. So, unless the I/O performance
> scales nonlinearly with size (a bit strange but not inconsistent with my R
> experiments), I would think that things should have gotten faster (by the
> wall clock, not slower). Of course, it is possible that the other
> components of the R system have been worked on more -- I am not equipped
> to comment...

I think your RAM calculation is a bit off. in late 1993, 4MB systems
were the standard PC, with 16 or 32 MB on high-end workstations.
Comparable figures today are probably  256MB for the entry-level PC
and a couple GB in the high end. So that's more like a factor of 64.
On the other hand, CPU's have changed by more than the clock speed; in
particular, the number of clock cycles per FP calculation has
decreased considerably and is currently less than one in some
circumstances. 

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
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